Rabbiter - interesting project based on RabbitMQ that could provide the basis for Twitter services. Everything in Erlang and massively designed for scalability.
Content-type: matter-transport/sentient-life-form
Techdirt: Diebold/Premier Actually Admits Its Machines Are Faulty! And That It Lied About Antivirus Software... - and this will surely be ignored here in Germany. Or will someone finally wake up?
The Transterpreter - haven't had a Lego link in a while. Transterpreter provides an Occam environment that can run on a Lego RCX brick.
Index of /namespace/OmniOutliner - DTDs for the OmniOutliner XML format.
Amazon EBS - Elastic Block Store has launched - normal block devices for Amazon EC2.
Free Critical Mass Modula-3 (CM3) - actively supported Modula-3.
Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Bad TV - good discussion (i.e. refutation) of the moon landing was fake spinners.
CPU Rings, Privilege, and Protection - good overview article.
Drinking fruit juice 'may stop medication working' - hmm, Mizolastin is not listed there, but the pharmacy already gave me information about grapefruit juice. Somehow silly, maybe I should drink my usual morning orange juice in the evening from now on ...
The Associated Press: States throw out costly electronic voting machines - only here do we still believe the manufacturers' lies more than the experts. There are no unhackable computers. As already in XKCD: "anti-virus programs on voting machines? You are doing it wrong."
The Great Consumer Crash of 2009 - ouch. This reads like a script for a horror movie. And since we in Germany are usually a few years behind the U.S. in all stupid ideas, something similar will certainly hit us here as well (and some of the developments described there can also be observed here - such as living off the credit line).
BeagleBoard.org - nice small ARM-based computer with quite impressive performance. Could almost tempt me to play around with it.
Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0, Plus First Spliced Cable Photos - 10x faster and therefore 9x more power - and then the laptop is 20x faster all ...
tunnelblick - graphical OpenVPN client for OS X with all necessary binaries and tools. Could be really useful for me.
We're running out of IPv4 addresses. Time for IPv6. Really. - oops. it's getting tight now.
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - loads of practical scripts for iTunes.
Django on Jython: It's here! - awesome! This makes Java as a platform more interesting to me again - the progress in Jython in the last few months has been gigantic.
Advertising and Privacy – Google Privacy Center - important link, opt-out from the Doubleclick cookie mess. No idea if it's realistic, or just fake - but if the latter, that will surely come out sooner or later.
Edge Cases are the Root of all Evil - how edge cases are used in arguments to kill ideas. Interesting perspective - and have already often observed this in IT discussions.
Network Advertising Initiative - and a whole list of opt-outs for other ad networks.
Pentagon will apparently ignore Guantanamo acquittals - do we need more evidence that the USA has long left the rule of law behind? When will politics in Europe finally wake up and seriously stand up against this madness? If another state - for example, China - did something like this to opponents, the USA would be the first to shout "violation of international law." Of course, now all the US sycophants can scream "anti-Americanism" again - but seriously, can one still be pro-USA when observing this madness?
Cabinet decision: High penalties for illegal telephone advertising - will Unitymedia be impressed? They make unauthorized calls, they also suppress caller IDs. All signs are there.
No broadcasting fee for PC in law firm - "Moreover, the fundamental right to freedom of information ensures that one can inform oneself unhindered from generally accessible sources. The introduction of a broadcasting fee for an internet PC would create a state access barrier that has nothing to do with the information sources and contradicts the principle of proportionality." - whether the judgment can be upheld? After all, the general possibility of reception is the sole decisive criterion according to the argument of the GEZ. (by the way, I pay broadcasting fees for my Mac - but there is also a DVB-T receiver in it, which is even used once a year for the Tour de France)
Federal Audit Office criticizes work of job centers - and surprisingly finds exactly what everyone with common sense has already said: that 1-euro jobs bring nothing and that reorganizing from poor counseling at the employment office does not automatically make for good counseling at the job center ... but will our politicians learn from this? No, certainly not.
Here We Go Again: Yahoo! Music Throws Away the DRM Keys - one would think that Yahoo should have paid more attention than Microsoft when they tried the same stunt (Microsoft has meanwhile extended this a bit, which doesn't really improve the situation). Yahoo is increasingly presenting itself as the fools of the Internet. And music buyers will hopefully finally wake up and understand what DRM actually means - withdrawal of the rights to dispose of purchased goods.
The Death of Google's Patents? - "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc." - Only in the Banana Republic do the paid prolethicians still clamor for the introduction of software patents, because we just need them. And how does their argument "we need them, otherwise we look stupid compared to the USA" look now that the US Patent Office itself says: "Software patents are a mess"?
Erlang GS Explorations - Organized by Doug Edmunds - interesting collection of graphics functions from Erlang.
Drivers in the EPO trap - "After an agreement between the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA and the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, this molecule was incorporated into the third generation of the blood doping agent Erythropoietin (EPO), which can be detected in doping controls." - smart!
Method and apparatus for creation and maintenance of database structure - a patent. On lists. In a database. From 2005. And now someone explain to me where the great innovation lies, and why we so desperately need software patents. Don't we already have enough trolls under the bridges, do we also need this shit? (and yes, the company that has this great patent is now suing web companies that store lists for users in databases)
Methods for tying knots in ropes - because I thought, just search for "tie your shoelaces". No shoelaces found right away, but a patent for knots. In ropes. So there are also crazy patents outside of software ...
Objective Caml Plugin for Xcode - unfortunately not yet with support for Intel CPUs.
Tetris - in sed ... (I can't think of anything else to say)
Park Place - A recreation of the Amazon S3 API, but hosted on your own machine. In Ruby. Perhaps not entirely uninteresting after the recent 7-hour outage - for example, you could run a mirror of the data at Amazon on your own box and, in the event of longer outages, switch to your own copy within your own software to at least remain rudimentarily functional during S3 outages. Or even build your own server structure based on this and turn your back on S3.
Wikipedia Webservice - Convert Geo-Coordinates to Wikipedia Articles. Hmm, that would be a nice DIY project, search for Wikipedia at the local point on the iPhone and display it. I've already done some DIY projects on the iPhone.
Cyclists face infertility and impotence - I knew it all along, it's a good idea to ride a recumbent bike!
Bushido wins in court against three retirees - it would actually be quite nice if the courts could agree on something for once. Because this is just getting ridiculous. Quite apart from that: who actually wants this acoustic noise pollution?
"That's pressure tactics" - I've also had contact with the cold acquisition of Unity Media (or call centers commissioned by them - I don't care who spouts the nonsense, one pays the other for the "performance"). Particularly amusing: I never had a contract with them (but presumably my landlord - but he can't agree to advertising calls on my behalf), the caller claimed the opposite, of course, quite brazenly. And after my instruction that their action is illegal, as I never had a contract with them and therefore could never agree to telephone advertising, she simply hung up. They are, after all, extremely "serious" companies ...
My Code Blog: ICFP Contest 2008 - umm. Navigation software. Written in the TeX macro language (with small Perl helpers for network access, which TeX doesn't have). I already find the idea of a sqrt macro in TeX sick (hey, that stuff doesn't even have all the basic arithmetic operations - it doesn't necessarily need them as a text typesetting system). Some people just have too much time ...
Postgres-R: a database replication system for PostgreSQL - worth a look?
SPD paves the way for sensitive data exchange with the USA - Special democratic data protection understanding: non-existent. Just casually sell data - and what is classified as serious crime is defined by the USA as they see fit (even here, terrorism has become a term that everyone can stretch to fit their needs).
5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G - interesting contrast to the otherwise quite different assessment of the iPhone. I myself look at the iPhone more from the other side - in relation to other mobile devices, it is surprisingly open (because with most phones there is no direct native access to the basic systems, only via Java layers and frameworks). And the developer tax doesn't really bother me. On the other hand, I'm not Richard Stallman either.
Energy Social Tariffs: Federal Press Office admits mistake - well, when the prolethicians open their mouths, they lie. But it is embarrassing when they don't even know the problems they themselves have created. And of course, don't apologize for it, where would we end up if we considered citizens as equal.
Official Google Mobile Blog: Searching on an iPhone can be fun - well, and when you look at the comments, you get a laugh. Because Google was so smart to put the app only in the US App Store and not offer it internationally. Result: piles of "why isn't this in the XX App Store?" comments. And you would think Google would have understood the internet (and yes, Apple has always had a split relationship with country borders, just look at the "Apple-Germany tax" on all prices, I didn't expect much from them on that point).
Squeak by Example - those who want to get started with Squeak but don't know where to begin might find inspiration in this free book.
Mobile carrier T-Mobile to ban VoIP program for iPhone - quaint, really quaint.
The Omni Group - Developer - Source Code - I need to check that out. The OmniWebFramework sounds very interesting and could be of great help for a current project of mine.
Étoilé - interesting project based on GNUStep, providing an environment with libraries, frameworks, programming languages (a Smalltalk that can be directly combined with Objective-C) and tools. It's great that there are always activities in the GNUStep environment, as it operates somewhat below the horizon defined by Gnome and KDE desktop environments.
Data Protection Experts: Google Analytics Violates User Rights - well, this assessment was somewhat predictable. I'm curious to see what else will come up in the near future. Will Google give in? I doubt it. And even if they do - how credible would an (unverifiable!) assurance from Google be?